"Educator at heart" Tania Trejo-Mendez (MALAS 2024) serves as Latinx leadership fellow

BY MARÍA DE LA CRUZ MORA (MALAS 2025 )

Tania Trejo-Mendez, a Chicana first-generation graduate scholar from Lakeland, Florida and recent graduate of the MALAS program, is making strides in education equity in the South. For eight weeks this past summer, Tania served as a Southern Education Leadership Initiative (SELI) fellow, a position that has empowered her to impact and address inequalities alongside Latinx education in North Carolina.

Tania’s master's project in MALAS was focused on the women of the Young Lords party, exploring the activist role they played in the 20th century. Her work also sheds light on the intersections of Latinxs civil rights movements and Latinx history as a whole. In part of Tania’s professional journey, she has been striving to bridge her academic research with community advocacy. Her commitment to this led her to apply to the SELI fellowship following graduation.

The Southern Education Leadership Initiative is an organization that pairs fellows with non-profits and education-focused organizations throughout the South to provide access to better educational opportunities. Leaders are provided with hands-on work on pressing social issues affecting underrepresented communities.

During her fellowship with SELI, Tania was placed with LatinxEd, an educational initiative in North Carolina dedicated to advancing educational equity for immigrants. With LatinxEd, Tania taught classes, helped develop and refine curriculum, coordinated events, and connected with her growing community. “It was so meaningful to be in a space where our students, our fellows, and the staff that I was working with were all Latinos, all from immigrant backgrounds or immigrants themselves,” Tania shares. “And all people who are invested in building a better state of education.”

As she progressed through her fellowship, Tania credits the mentorship and teachings of Dr. Rafael Ramirez Solórzano, specifically the concept of testimonio, personal narratives that uplift Latino history, and “translanguaging,” using both Spanish and English delivering curriculum so that mixed groups wouldn’t self-segregate. “All of these concepts that we talked about in Dr. Solórzano’s class, like talking about how language configures into identity, were really essential to the work that I was doing at LatinxEd and thinking through how to develop curriculum that is meaningful, engaging, and also culturally responsive,” Tania reflects.

Tania was also able to apply some of what she’d learned from her MALAS research, in addition to her coursework and mentorships. “Part of leadership development is encouraging folks to see themselves as leaders by teaching them about their history and the people in their history who’ve made great strides in changing the world for the better,” she explains. So, as a result, she was asked to teach a session that covered Latinx civil rights movements, from the women of the Young Lords party that anchored Tania’s research, to other activism like the Dreamers movement and the 1960 East Los Angeles walkouts for education. “It was so cool to bring that little bit of my MALAS research and to tie it into a lesson that we were doing with our fellows, and encourage them to reach back into Latinx history as a source of cultural pride,” Tania says.

Currently, Tania is working for Planned Parenthood as a community organizer in reproductive justice. At first, she didn’t know if her experience would match a job that wasn’t in education. But soon she realized that her organizing skills, passion for reproductive health, and experience in community education fit perfectly for the role. “I care about this topic, and I’m an educator at heart,” she says. “This may not be education in the traditional sense, but it’s a new opportunity to educate folks and tie in my purpose.”

This process has helped shape her perspective for the future to come. The advice she shares with other MALAS students is to not be afraid and allow your interest to take you to unexpected places, and different opportunities. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out to past alumni about new opportunities. MALAS alumni like Tania are continuing to shape the work and leave legacies of change in transforming the world for the better. ◆